"Detente, entente, and cooperation&quot

For the first time in two decades, a prominent European leader thus offered a credible alternative to the order of "Yalta." The challenge was acutely felt on both sides. At a time when Soviet diplomacy had exchanged its past activism for a conservative policy aiming at the consecration of its domination of Eastern Europe and of the division of Germany, de Gaulle’s essentially revisionist approach was unsettling. Although Moscow was evidently satisfied by de Gaulle’s assault on US hegemony and his policy toward NATO, the Soviet leadership did not welcome his desire for a more autonomous Eastern Europe. Moreover, while Soviet officials shared his views on Germany’s borders and its nonnuclear status, they were clearly disappointed by de Gaulle’s refusal to ratify Germany’s partition and to recognize the German Democratic Republic (GDR). And while they hoped to use relations with Gaullist France to promote their vision of European security, they deplored his reluctance to endorse their project of a pan-European conference, now a key objective for Moscow. Despite common interests, the limits of Franco-Soviet convergence were quite clear. Yet France’s Western partners were perhaps even more disturbed by Gaullist revisionism. Washington was dismayed by what amounted to a refutation of the very premises of the strategy of containment and by what it perceived as a blueprint for a European settlement excluding the United States. In Bonn, many leaders were distrustful of a policy which essentially reversed the traditional doctrine with regard to the German question by making reunification the long-term outcome of detente, and not the other way round. And some were - wrongly - suspicious of a "deal," if not an old-style alliance de revers between Paris and Moscow in order to maintain the division of Germany.

De Gaulle’s ambitious East-West policy was all the more upsetting for France’s allies because it was coupled with his equally disturbing NATO policy. On the one hand, developments in the East and the emerging detente were used as a justification for France’s disengagement from NATO. The military bloc that had been created at the height of the Cold War, the French argued, had become a liability for improved East-West relations. Hence there was a need to transform NATO into a less bellicose, less US-dominated body that would be more attuned to the new East-West context. France’s withdrawal from the integrated organization, announced in March 1966, therefore, was not only the result of the general’s quest for "independence," which he had pursued since 1958, but also designed to promote his vision of a new European order.

Accordingly, de Gaulle was more and more tempted to use France’s estrangement from NATO as an asset in reaching out to the East. France’s withdrawal from military integration, French decisionmakers believed, would stimulate in the long run similar centrifugal tendencies in the East and, therefore, contribute to the dismantling of blocs on both side of the Iron Curtain. In the short run, however, French officials recognized that their country’s growing distance from NATO and the United States intrigued Moscow, making France an even more valuable interlocutor in the eyes of the Soviets. It was thus no accident that de Gaulle’s visit to the USSR took place barely three months after he had announced his decision regarding NATO, creating an unsettling conjunction as seen from Washington and other Western capitals where his policies were now perceived as verging on neutralism - wrongly, since France’s withdrawal never implied a rupture of military solidarity with the rest of the alliance.

By then, de Gaulle’s East-West design had also become inseparable from what may be described as his "global" revisionism, which - although nominally directed at both superpowers - was increasingly identified with his assault on US "hegemony" worldwide. His recognition of the People’s Republic of China in January 1964, much to Washington’s dismay, was a clear sign of his determination to challenge US policies. De Gaulle wanted to use his growing reputation as a maverick to reach out to the Third World. He wanted to position his country as an advocate of North-South cooperation as well as a champion of self-determination. He made this clear in a speech he gave in Phnom Penh in September 1966, in which he resoundingly condemned the US war in Vietnam and vibrantly called for the emancipation of subject peoples.248 De Gaulle’s challenge to the United States - especially his assault on the Vietnam War, which he saw as likely to lead to an escalation of tension in the East-West conflict - vested him with additional capital in his dealings with the East and enhanced his global reputation as an imaginative and independent statesman. By 1968, de Gaulle’s foreign policy had turned into an all-out crusade against US preponderance and against the established global order.